@JaneGray

The reason for Biden not to run isn't that he doesn't have his faculties. It isn't that he isn't doing popular things. It isn't that he has poor skills. It's a more subtle set of things.

First, and most important, he is at an age where he can't guarantee (even probabilistically) 5 more years of life. In an ordinary job, we don't fuss about that because they are not so important. But shifts if the balance of world power demand more than that. Look at what happened when RGB, who was healthy in most ways and quite a fighter, died at an inconvenient time. All the good things she did until the bitter end do not offset the nightmare of having her die at a time when we were in least control.

If Biden died, for example, very shortly before the election, there would be a constitutional crisis. Some would claim he had to simply be scratched from the ballot and that it needed to say only the GOP candidate and no one else. Others would push for the VP to step up and pick another VP, but the battle for VP is not the same as the battle for President. A VP is who the candidate trusts, not always who the public trusts. It would be a mess.

And if Biden died in office, the chain of succession would be a single person thin. The VP would become President, but if that VP were unavailable for surgery, or due to an accident, or due to a rogue action, the Speaker of the House (that's McCarthy now, in case people are not seeing this) would become President just like that and without any intervening question because our founders thought that it was a good idea to have that chain be party-blind. THAT is too horrible a fate.

And even beyond that, changing times need changing circumstances. That Biden has navigated well does not say he will continue to, in part because he is a centrist, and Climate weighs ever more heavily. Some progressives may jump ship and that will sabotage the future if they split the party . We need, if not an AOC, at least someone who is left of Biden on Climate and who will represent the youth of America, who increasingly see we are not adequately tending to a world they will have to live.

Finally, the Republicans are used to arguing about Biden. They are ready with their Hunter stories. There will be balloon stories, and stories of mislaid documents. They need someone they do not have such a well-worked narrative about, someone who will put them off balance having to have actual discussions on actual issues.

So the Dems must grow up and be a party not of saviors but of ideals. They must make their morality plain. They must get better at explaining who they are rather than ceding the narrative to the other side. Because another 4 years of Biden will not do that. It will assume all of those things go without saying and make us even more vulnerable at the end of that time than we already are.

More on this by me:

Unarticulated Democratic Morality
https://web.archive.org/web/20101012142553/http://open.salon.com/blog/kent_pitman/2010/10/07/unarticulated_democratic_morality

Articulating Democratic Morality
https://web.archive.org/web/20101016065120/http://open.salon.com/blog/kent_pitman/2010/10/10/articulating_democratic_morality

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@democracydocket

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